It was forbidden to light a lamp or a brazier inside the chamber. As the gloom deepened, the cold sharpened, and the white shapes of the senators, motionless in the November dusk, became like a parliament of ghosts. After Metellus had droned on for an eternity and then sat down in favor of Hortensius-a man who could talk on anything for hours-everyone knew the debate was over, and very soon afterwards Gellius dissolved the House. He limped down the aisle, an old man in search of his dinner, preceded by four lictors carrying his curule chair. Once he had passed through the doors the senators streamed out after him and Sthenius and I retreated a short distance into the Forum to wait for Cicero. Gradually the crowd around us dwindled. The Sicilian kept asking me what was happening, but I felt it wiser to say nothing, and we stood in silence. I pictured Cicero sitting alone on the back benches, waiting for the chamber to empty, so that he could leave without having to speak to anyone, for I feared he had badly lost face. But to my surprise he strolled out chatting with Hortensius and another, older senator, whom I did not recognize. They talked for a while on the steps of the Senate House, shook hands, and parted.
“Do you know who that was?” asked Cicero, coming over to us. Far from being cast down, he appeared highly amused. “That was Verres’s father. He has promised to write to his son, urging him to drop the prosecution, if we agree not to bring the matter back to the Senate.”
Poor Sthenius was so relieved, I thought he might die from gratitude. He dropped to his knees and began kissing the senator’s hands. Cicero made a sour face and gently raised him to his feet. “Really, my dear Sthenius, save your thanks until I have actually achieved something. He has only promised to write, that is all. It is not a guarantee.”
Sthenius said, “But you will accept the offer?”
Cicero shrugged. “What choice do we have? Even if I retable the motion, they will only talk it out again.”
I could not resist asking why, in that case, Hortensius was bothering to offer a deal at all.
Cicero nodded slowly. “Now that is a good question.” There was a mist rising from the Tiber, and the lamps in the shops along the Argiletum shone yellow and gauzy. He sniffed the damp air. “I suppose it can only be because he is embarrassed. Which in his case, of course, takes quite a lot. Yet it seems that even he would prefer not to be associated too publicly with such a flagrant criminal as Verres. So he is trying to settle the matter quietly. I wonder how much his retainer is from Verres: it must be an enormous sum.”
“Hortensius was not the only one who came to Verres’s defense,” I reminded him.
“No.” Cicero glanced back at the Senate House, and I could see that something had just occurred to him. “They are all in it together, aren’t they? The Metellus brothers are true aristocrats-they would never lift a finger to help anyone apart from themselves, unless it was for money. As for Catulus, the man is frantic for gold. He has undertaken so much building on the Capitol over the past ten years, it is almost more of a shrine to him than it is to Jupiter. I estimate we must have been looking at half a million in bribes this afternoon, Tiro. A few Delian bronzes-however fine, Sthenius, forgive me-would not be sufficient to buy that kind of protection. What is Verres up to down there in Sicily?” He suddenly began working his signet ring over his knuckle. “Take this to the National Archive, Tiro, and show it to one of the clerks. Demand in my name to see all the official accounts submitted to the Senate by Gaius Verres.”
My face no doubt registered my dismay. “But the National Archive is run by Catulus’s people. He is sure to hear word of what you are doing.”
“That cannot be helped.”
“But what am I looking for?”
“Anything interesting. You will know it when you see it. Go quickly, while there is still some light.” He put his arm around the shoulders of the Sicilian. “As for you, Sthenius-you will come to dinner with me tonight, I hope? It is only family, but I am sure my wife will be delighted to meet you.”
I rather doubted that, but naturally it was not my place to say so.
THE NATIONAL ARCHIVE, which was then barely six years old, loomed over the Forum even more massively than it does today, for back then it had less competition. I climbed that great flight of steps up to the first gallery and by the time I found an attendant my heart was racing. I showed him the seal and demanded, on behalf of Senator Cicero, to see Verres’s accounts. At first he claimed never to have heard of Cicero and, besides, that the building was closing. But then I pointed in the direction of the Carcer and told him firmly that if he did not desire to spend a month in chains in the state prison for impeding official business, he had better fetch those records now. (One lesson I had learned from Cicero was how to hide my nerves.) He scowled a bit and thought about it, then told me to follow him.
The Archive was Catulus’s domain, a temple to him and his clan. Above the vaults was his inscription-Q. Lutatius Catulus, son of Quintus, grandson of Quintus, consul, by a decree of the Senate, commissioned the erection of this National Archive, and approved it satisfactory-and beside the entrance stood his life-size statue, looking somewhat more youthful and heroic than he had appeared in the Senate that afternoon. Most of the attendants were either his slaves or his freedmen and wore his emblem, a little dog, sewn onto their tunics. I shall tell you the kind of man Catulus was. He blamed the suicide of his father on the populist praetor Gratidianus-a distant relative of Cicero -and after the victory of the aristocrats in the civil war between Marius and Sulla, he took the opportunity for revenge. His young protégé, Sergius Catilina, at his behest, seized Gratidianus and whipped him through the streets to the Catulus family tomb. There his arms and legs were broken, his ears and nose cut off, his tongue pulled out of his mouth and severed, and his eyes gouged out. In this ghastly condition his head was then lopped off, and Catilina bore it in triumph to Catulus, who was waiting in the Forum. Do you wonder now why I was nervous as I waited for the vaults to be opened?
The senatorial records were kept in fireproof strongrooms, built to withstand a lightning strike, tunneled into the rock of the Capitol, and when the slaves swung back the big bronze door I had a glimpse of thousands upon thousands of rolled papyri, receding into the shadows of the sacred hill. Five hundred years of history were encompassed in that one small space: half a millennium of magistracies and governorships, proconsular decrees and judicial rulings, from Lusitania to Macedonia, from Africa to Gaul, and most of them made in the names of the same few families: the Aemilii, the Claudii, the Cornelii, the Lutatii, the Metelii, the Servilii. This was what gave Catulus and his kind the confidence to look down upon such provincial equestrians as Cicero.
They kept me waiting in an antechamber while they searched for Verres’s records, and eventually they brought out to me a single document case containing perhaps a dozen rolls. From the labels on the ends I saw that these were all, with one exception, accounts from his time as urban praetor. The exception was a flimsy piece of papyrus, barely worth the trouble of unrolling, covering his work as a junior magistrate twelve years previously, at the time of the war between Marius and Sulla, and on which was written just three sentences: “I received 2,235,417 sesterces. I expended on wages, grain, payments to legates, the proquaestor, the praetorian cohort 1,635,417 sesterces. I left 600,000 at Ariminum.” Remembering the scores of rolls of meticulous accounts which Cicero ’s term as a junior magistrate in Sicily had generated, all of which I had written out for him, I could barely refrain from laughing.
“Is this all there is?”
The attendant assured me it was.